


let the drum beat drop

by tardigradeschool



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Crew as Family, F/M, Gen, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Not as angsty as it sounds, Platonic Relationships, Sharing a Bed, Touch-Starved
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-04
Updated: 2017-12-04
Packaged: 2019-01-29 12:21:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 4,306
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12630966
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tardigradeschool/pseuds/tardigradeschool
Summary: Taako gets hit with a poorly cast Sleeping Beauty-esque curse. The crew makes it work.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> title from "I Am Not A Robot" by marina & the diamonds
> 
> aka, I play fast and loose with dnd magic, based on this post I made: https://mcgonagollygee.tumblr.com/post/167091468292/stolen-century-taako-getting-hit-with-a-sleeping

Taako collapsing is not in and of itself concerning. Taako collapses when they run out of confectioner’s sugar, or when Lup suggests that maybe jorts aren’t _ not _ sexy. He collapses if a hike goes on longer than roughly twenty-five minutes, or if someone suggests that maybe it’s his turn to empty the dishwasher. Watching Taako tumble dramatically to the ground is, all told, a fairly common occurrence. 

This is… not that. 

For two reasons, really; firstly, that this collapse appears to be neither voluntary nor comfortable, and secondly because Taako does not get back up or even move. Barry barely has time to take a step toward Taako’s prone body before Magnus grabs the mage who cursed Taako by the scruff of the neck, shaking his wand out of his hand. The mage tries to squirm away, but Magnus lifts him up so his feet aren’t touching the ground and moves like he’s about to sock him in the face. 

“Don’t kill him,” Lucretia calls hurriedly from Taako’s side. “Magnus, we don’t know what he did to Taako--”

Barry reaches Taako’s side, kneeling beside Lucretia. He’s fully unconscious, face completely blank, but he’s still alive, and he seems to be physically unharmed. On Taako’s other side, Lup stands up, almost shaking with fury, and advances on the mage, who is now trembling as he sways slowly in Magnus’s grip. The mage can’t be over twenty, pimple-faced with a lot of product in his hair, but Barry can’t quite manage to feel sorry for him.

“The fuck did you do to my brother?” she asks, quietly. 

The mage does not pass his intimidation save. “I didn’t--” he tries anyway, and then Magnus shakes him  roughly and he squeaks. “Jesus, Jesus, okay. It’s just a sleeping curse, it’s no big--”

“No big?” Lup echoes, louder. “Then you’ll have no problem undoing it then, huh?”

“I… can’t,” the mage says, looking genuinely regretful. Barry suspects it’s due more to the fact that Magnus and Lup do a killer bad cop-bad cop than any sudden appearance of moral rectitude. “But all he needs is a kiss from his true love.” He turns desperately towards Taako, catching sight of Barry and Lucretia. “Hey, lady, you could try laying one on him, I don’t know--”

Lucretia lets out a slightly hysterical laugh. 

“I don’t know!” the mage exclaims. “Look, can I just go on my merry way--”

“Will the spell end if we kill this guy?” Magnus asks the group at large. 

“Only one way to tell,” Lup growls, raising her wand, and that just happens to be when Barry’s hand brushes Taako’s and Taako blinks awake.

“Uh,” Lucretia says.

“Hi,” Taako says. “Why am I on the ground?”

“Taako?” Magnus says. He frowns. “Barry?”

The mage’s eyes dart between Taako, Lup, and Barry, clearly anxious about the fact that the woman pointing a wand at him is very distracted. “Um--” he begins. Lup holds up a hand to silence him. 

“Given that I’m fairly certain my boyfriend isn’t having an affair with my brother,” she says. “Someone needs to explain what the fuck is happening right now.”

“I don’t know,” Barry says. “I’m not. Having an affair, I mean. Plus, I didn’t kiss him. And I love you,” he adds to Lup for good measure. She doesn't look away from the mage, but she offers him a thumbs up.

“Who’s kissing me?” Taako says. He tries to sit up, but in doing so, he pulls his hand away from Barry’s and he starts to go limp again. Lucretia grabs his shoulder before his head can hit the ground. Barry grabs his hand again and Taako startles awake for the second time. 

“You’re not secretly in love with Barry, are you?” Lucretia asks him.

“I think the fuck not,” Taako says. “Blue Jeans White Shirt over here is not exactly my type. No offense.”

“None taken,” Barry assures him.

“I have a theory,” Lucretia says. She puts her hand on Taako’s other hand. “Barry, let go.” Barry does. Taako stays awake. Lucretia smiles triumphantly. “Taako, am I right in assuming that both of us are still gay as peacocks?” When Taako shoots her a finger gun with his free hand, she turns around to look at the mage. “I think you messed up the spell a little bit. What’s your name?”

“Chad,” the mage says. Magnus still hasn’t put him down, but he’s stopped struggling. “Are you sure? I said--” He starts reciting the spell and Magnus tenses.

“His wand is on the ground,” Lup reminds him.

“Right,” Chad says, glancing at Magnus nervously. “No magic here, I promise.” He repeats the spell he said.

Lucretia starts laughing again. “You left out  _ true _ when you said love, and you used  _ while  _ for  _ until, _ ” she tells him. “And that isn’t the word for kiss, it’s -- well, it’s  _ caress. _ ” She glances down to where Taako’s hand is locked in hers. “Usually it’s translated a little… dirtier. But I suppose this counts.”

“But that’s good, right?” Chad asks. “You’ll let me go?”

“Hmm,” Lup says, “Sure, kid, we’ll let you go,” and when Chad sags with relief, she steps directly onto his wand, snapping it in two. “If you’re gonna be evil, at least be competent next time.”

“Uh -- yes ma’am,” he says, clearly too happy to care, and when Magnus sets him down he takes off sprinting into the woods. 

“That was very mature of us,” Magnus says, watching him disappear.

“Not really,” Lup says, stepping back to Taako’s side. “I hexed him so whenever he tries to jerk off,  _ Never Gonna Give You Up _ will play really, really loud. He should have fun trying to get rid of that without a wand.” 

“I love you,” Barry says again, reverently. 

“Love you too,” Lup says, pecking him on the cheek. “Taako, you feelin’ alright?” She takes his hand from Lucretia, the tightness of her grip belying her casual tone.

“Peachy,” Taako says. Lup pulls him up, but instead of releasing his hand, she laces her fingers with his. 

“Don’t let go,” she says, using her free hand to tuck some loose hair behind Taako’s ear. “Just like old times.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Taako gets used to holding hands. Barry takes a risk.

The four-day trip back to the Starblaster is fairly easy; they walk most of the day, which means it’s easy for one of them to hold hands with Taako. They only have one incident with Taako’s new magical narcolepsy; Magnus lets go of his hand to point at a dog. It’s only Lup springing forward that stops Taako from passing out cold and concussing himself. (Magnus is apologetic, but not as apologetic as he maybe should be.)

After the dog incident, Barry proposes that Taako hold hands with two of them at any given time, so that if they have to drop hands for some reason, he’s not in danger of a concussion. Taako complies, reluctantly, although he refuses to walk between Lup and Barry. He claims it makes him feel “like a fucking toddler in the park”. Barry will admit there is something distinctly familial about watching Taako hold hands with Lucretia on one side and Lup on the other; he swings his clasped hands in the same way Barry’s cousins did when they were young. 

Over those several days, they experiment with the spell; it’s fixed on Taako pretty firmly, so getting it off is a no-go, but as long as Taako isn’t in danger of falling over, they can stretch the limits of it. They find that although any one of the four of them can be touching him anywhere, there has to be skin contact without fabric blocking the touch. The person he’s touching doesn’t have to be awake for it to have any effect on him.

From the other side of the campfire, Barry watches Taako leaning on his sister. His head rests on her shoulder and her head rests on his. He can picture them sitting exactly like this a hundred and fifty years ago, piled in coats to stay warm, clutching each other so no one could pull them apart. 

 

They’re only two months into this cycle, and it isn’t especially safe for them to be outside the ship, which means that all seven of them are crowded into the same set of tiny rooms. Barry loves his family dearly, but he can only watch Merle clip his toenails so many times before getting a little restless. 

Barry thought it would be the physical contact itself that would drive Taako up a wall, but after several weeks Taako seems fairly comfortable passed off between crewmembers. It’s inconvenient, to be sure, but Taako takes to casual touch much more easily than Barry would have expected. Seeing Taako curled up under Magnus’s arm on the coach or resting his feet on Lucretia’s lap isn’t strange at all anymore, nor does Barry even really register if Taako takes his hand and leans up against him while he’s reading. But even as touch seems to be a non-issue, Taako is growing restless the same way Barry is. 

Oddly, no one else seems to be as bothered by being cooped up for so long. Lup and Lucretia are working on some project and Merle and Magnus have made it their mission to get Davenport to relax. So far, the plan seems to mostly involve plying him with wine, although Davenport seems to have recently conceded to Magnus painting his nails. The paint job is somewhat messy, but in all fairness Magnus’s nails have about four times the surface area of the captain’s.

Barry’s got his own experiments going, but he’s had to slow down a lot once he realized being stuck on the ship meant he had a finite amount of his supplies. Certain materials he can conjure, but many are too volatile or complex for him to make himself. Taako can help a little on that front; Barry hadn’t realized exactly how hard he’d been working on transmutation until he transmutes water into a viscous chemical suspension without even concentrating. But there are supplies even Taako can’t make for him.

Late in the evening, the last of Barry’s reactant fizzles out in the test tube and Barry exclaims, “Fuck!”

Taako glances up from the floor. He’s lying on the ground reading, with a bare foot on Barry’s ankle. “Got a dud again?”

“Yeah,” Barry says. “I’d work on making the ratios more effective, but I’m completely fucking out of things to make ratios out of.” He slips his lab goggles and glasses off and lets his forehead thunk onto the counter. “Dammit.”

“You need to relax, my man,” Taako says, climbing up. He has to put his hand on the hole in the knee of Barry’s jeans to push himself up. “I’m antsy too, don’t get me wrong--”

“Let’s go for a walk,” Barry says.

“What, around the kitchen island?”

“Around the woods,” Barry says. “We’ve been in the air for six goddamn weeks, we can afford to take a little hike, right? I saw a lake underneath us yesterday, maybe we could swim?” He just -- he  _ needs  _ to be somewhere where he can’t constantly hear the murmurs of six other people, even if they’re six people he loves. He’s been at this for decades, and maybe he deserves to cut himself some slack.

Taako stares at him for several long moments before a grin starts growing on his face. “Barold,” he says, impressed. “When did you grow a spine?”

“I’ve got a lot of bad influences,” Barry says. 

“I’ll say,” Taako says. He thrusts his hand out and Barry takes it. “Hell yeah, let’s sneak out. Davenport won’t even notice we’re gone. We can have the teen experience I never got. And I know  _ you  _ didn’t.” 

“Uncalled for,” Barry says, without rancor. 

It  _ is  _ weirdly thrilling, in a distinctly juvenile way, to be slipping through the common room out to the deck. The sun is setting over the fields to the north, and below them there’s nothing but forest and a series of small lakes dotting the landscape. 

“Ready?” Taako asks. Without waiting for an answer, he casts Feather Fall and climbs over the rail, pulling Barry with him. Barry’s never been a fan of heights, but they descend slowly enough that it doesn’t feel like they’re falling at all.

The walk to the lake is peaceful. Taako knows how to let a good silence hang. It’s only when they reach the edge of the water that Taako says, “We didn’t bring swimsuits.”

“Aren’t you a transmutation wizard?”

“Oh,” Taako says, “Right.” He pulls his wand out of the pocket of his pants.

And then something hits Barry on the back of the head, _ very _ hard. He lurches forward, onto the ground, his hand falling out of Taako’s. His ears are ringing so loudly that he doesn’t even hear Taako’s body hit the ground. 

“Shit--” he gasps, and he tries to twist around to see what hit him. His vision is blurry, and all he sees is a dark outline against the twilight sky before something hits him again and his brain stops taking in information altogether. 


	3. Chapter 3

 

“Oh good,” Taako says. “You’re awake.”

Barry blinks, half expecting to have to squint against light, but wherever they are is almost as dark as the inside of his eyelids. He can just barely make out Taako, crouched beside him with a tight grip on Barry’s wrist.

“Are we in someone’s basement?” Barry asks. He can see a door in the dim light, along with what looks like an old ping pong table and a broken chair.

“No idea,” Taako tells him. “They threw me next to you when they put us in here, and my hand fell on your face. But I couldn’t see who it was. All the stuff’s enchanted so we can’t touch it.” He’s almost nonchalant, except for his vice-like grip. Taako’s not a bad actor, but Barry’s known him for fifty years, and he can see when he’s scared.

“Hey,” he says, easing himself up and putting his other hand over Taako’s. “We’ll be okay. They’ll find us. Or we can break out ourselves.”

“I know,” Taako says. “While you were snoozing I started to devise a plan. Then I remembered that neither of us can do magic and none of the crew has any idea where we are. So. That was kind of distracting.”

“Right,” Barry says. “No wands. We can make it work.” Taako shoots him a look that could not have more clearly communicated  _ can we? _

There is a shuffling noise outside the door. Taako’s grip tightens on Barry’s arm as the door creaks open, pulling both of them to their feet. The door creaks open and a short, somewhat stout figure steps through. They’re backlit, so it’s hard to tell much more about them, but Barry can tell that this person is not pleased. 

“Hey,” a low voice says, complete with a fantasy Brooklyn accent. “One of you fuckers is gonna make it so my little brother can jack it again. Or else.” 

Taako edges out from where he’s positioned himself behind Barry. “Or what?” he scoffs. “I’m not sure you’ve gotten enough out of Ricky Astley’s masterpiece. The climax of the song is  _ real  _ good, have you heard--”

“Fuck you,” the guy says, almost dispassionately, and before either of them can react, he holds up a weapon and blasts Taako in the shoulder. Taako’s grip slips off Barry’s wrist as he falls back. Barry tries to catch him as he goes, but Chad’s older brother levels the weapon at him. “Don’t move,” he says. “It’s just blunt force, he’s not gonna bleed out or nothin’. But it wouldn’t be pretty if I hit you in the head, capiche?”

“Yeah, I gotcha,” Barry says grimly. While athletic ability and size are not central to his self worth, he does wish he could intimidate someone, just once. Maybe he should grow a beard next year.

“I’m gonna come in here, I’m gonna ask two more times,” the guy says. “After that, I’m killing yous and shooting down your rocket, you hear?”

Good luck with that, Barry thinks. Chad’s brother takes this as confirmation. “Great,” he says, stepping back to the door. “I think we have an understanding. I’m Patrick, by the way.”

“Can I call you Pat?” Barry asks, because he’s spent too much time around Lup.

Pat points at him. Barry can’t tell if it’s supposed to be threatening or not.  “Only my ma calls me Pat,” he says, and then he closes the door behind him.

Once Pat is out of the room, Barry kneels, braces himself and reaches over to put a hand on Taako’s upper arm. Taako startles awake, breathless, and frantically grabs onto the same wrist that he had been holding before. “He’s gone,” Barry says quickly. “It’s okay. You’re okay.”

He intends for it to be comforting, but Taako’s breathing doesn’t slow. His fingers dig in harder. It occurs to Barry then that perhaps he doesn’t fully understand the terror that might come with not being able to stay awake without someone else. It suddenly sinks in, the hours Taako must have spent waiting in the dark for Barry to wake up, all too aware that all someone would have to do to beat him in a fight would be to separate him from Barry. 

Barry thinks of himself as a thoughtful guy, but there are certain things about both of the twins that have taken him a long time to pick up. Barry, for all his ability to empathize, was raised by a loving parent, in a place where he knew and trusted just about everyone. Taako and Lup, he has to remind himself, didn’t have that. It was a long time before he saw both of them asleep at the same time. It was an even longer time before he saw one of them sleep when the other one wasn’t there. 

“Hey, look -- I’m sorry. This is my fault, I shouldn’t have figured it was safe to leave..” Taako doesn’t look at him. Barry’s throat is dry. “Taako,” he says, unfolding one arm on impulse. “Can I?”

Taako looks up, then without any visual indication of his decision, leans up against him, head tucked between Barry’s neck and shoulder. It must be an awkward angle for him, but he stays like that until Barry can wrap an arm around his back and carefully pull him closer.

“Is this…?” Barry begins, then has to clear his throat. “Is this what you would have been doing the whole time? If it weren’t for -- I don’t know, everything?” The whole crew is fairly touchy at this point; Magnus is so comfortable with his body and so desperate to be near other people that they all got pretty much used to closeness, although Magnus and Barry exist on one end of the touchy-feely scale, with Taako and Davenport on the other. He hadn’t thought Taako was averse to touch, he just thought he wanted space. But this makes it seem like something else entirely.

“I’m sure I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Taako says. His grip on Barry’s wrist hasn’t loosened, but Barry very slowly reaches around Taako’s back and pulls Taako off his arm so that he can take his hand. Unlike Lup’s bitten nails, Taako’s are filed evenly, which Barry is grateful for; Taako’s hold on his hand is no looser than it had been on his arm. 

“I’m not going to let go,” Barry says, feeling, for a second, oddly paternal. “And we’re gonna get out of here. I promise.”

Taako lifts his head up slowly and looks at him with hard eyes. “Okay,” he says, after a long moment. “I believe you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so... there's actually gonna be one more chapter after this


	4. Chapter 4

Barry’s not much of a performer, but luckily his impersonation of someone with terrible, terrible diarrhea is good enough to get someone to come to the door. Taako decides, despite not being asked, to contribute by exclaiming things like, “Oh gods, the smell is going to kill me! You’re never going to get the stink out of this beautiful hardwood floor!” and things of that nature. It seems to cheer him up.

“Please,” Barry pleads with the person outside the door. “Just let me upstairs to the toilet, I won’t make any trouble.” 

He’s never seen anyone visibly crit fail their wisdom roll so hard. 

“I’ve been there, I’ve been there,” the guy behind the door tells Barry as he slips out the door, punching him sympathetically on the shoulder. He squints at Taako, following Barry out the door with a death grip on his hand. “Yo, why’s your pal coming?”

Taako knees him in the groin. Barry grabs a baseball bat that was leaning on the wall with his free hand and whacks the guy -- whose personalized t-shirt identifies him as “Doug-o” -- over the head. Doug-o collapses, unconscious. Barry glances around the room. This looks like the basement proper; what they were in was probably the boiler room. It’s absolutely full of sports equipment, none of which appears to be washed. 

“Nice,” Taako says, nudging Doug-o with a toe. “Looks like he’s the one who’s full of shit, not you,  _ ha _ .”

Barry hands him a hockey stick, then shoves a football helmet on Taako’s head for good measure. “Just in case you pass out standing up again. Lup’ll kill me if you’re seriously brain-damaged when we get back. See our wands anywhere?”

“Nope,” Taako says. He pushes the helmet up so he can see better. “Listen, Taako don’t do regrets, but I am  _ slightly _ wishing that I didn’t blow off Magnus’s ruff boi classes so many times.” 

“Right there with you,” Barry agrees. He swings his baseball bat experimentally. “Ready for whatever horrors await us upstairs?” Taako nods.

Together, they ascend the staircase and push open the door. Deafening music pours through -- dancing music, with a heavy bass and little to no melody. A press of moving bodies shuts the door for them as a couple begin to kiss eagerly against the wall. The room is packed with people, the lights low and everyone obviously varying levels of shit-faced.

Barry stumbles as someone pushes past and squints blearily at him. “You the guy who brought the liquor?” he asks, and without waiting for an answer he hooks an arm around Barry’s shoulders and bellows, “Thanks for the tequila, bro!”

Barry glances helplessly back at Taako. He can’t see most of his face because of the helmet, but his eyes are narrowed. He yanks Barry away, then pulls him closer so violently that Barry’s forehead collides with the helmet’s grill. “I did not get cursed and kidnapped,” Taako hisses, “to be brought to a fucking _ fantasy frat party _ .”

“Let’s just leave,” Barry yells back. He can see a back door somewhere over the heads of all of these drunken people. “Keep your head down, we can just sneak out.”

This works for about five seconds. 

“My  _ wand, _ ” Taako says, so loudly he can be heard above the music. “These motherfuckers better watch out, come  _ on _ , Barry.” He drags Barry through the crowd, towards where the people are packed the densest, the opposite way they need to be going. Through the movement, Barry catches sight of some dude holding both their wands and a bag of fantasy Cheetos, which he is using the wands like chopsticks to eat. 

“Hey,” someone says behind them, “Isn’t that the wizard who cursed Pat’s brother’s dick?”

Patrick himself emerges in front of them, flushed and sweaty. He’s swaying a little. “Hey, not cool,” he whines. The fantasy Brooklyn accent is entirely gone. “I, I fuckin’ locked you guys up, not cool.”

“You are, in fact, the not coolest,” Barry says.

“Not your best,” Taako tells him. “Anyway, Patty, we just need to get our wands from the disgusting mouth of your friend and then we’ll be off with no trouble. If you’re lucky.”

Patrick sneers at them. “If you don’t have ‘em, how’re you gonna get ‘em?”

Taako steps forward, letting the hockey stick fall. Patrick steps towards him too, but before he can do any more posturing, Taako slams his helmeted head forward into Patrick’s, with a loud  _ thunk _ . Patrick slumps back onto the floor.

“Uh,” Barry says. “Holy shit.”

Taako grins at him through the grill. “Head slamming was the one day of Magnus’s fighting lessons I actually showed up for.” He steps neatly over Patrick and plucks the wands out of the hands of Cheeto guy. “I’m a fast learner.”

.

 

“If you went for a fishing trip,” Davenport says, looking more tired than angry, “then why do you smell like alcohol and body spray? And why is Taako clutching Lup like that?”

“If no one’s dead I’m going back to bed,” Merle says.

“Can’t a guy just go on an impromptu fishing trip and miss his sister?” Taako asks, slightly muffled by Lup’s shoulder. Annoyance and relief are fighting for real estate on her face. Barry will tell her what really happened as soon as Davenport goes back to bed. 

“You can’t just go off to fuck knows where whenever you feel like it on a dangerous planet,” she tells him. “At least leave a note next time.”

“Noted,” Barry says. Lup snorts.

Taako has not moved. “Hey,” she whispers in his ear, with little to no change in volume from her normal speaking voice. “Can you go hang out in Magnus or Lucretia’s room tonight? Barry smells pretty bad but the rumpled look is really working for me and I think I’m gonna go have sex with him.”

“Gross,” Taako says dispassionately, reaching easily for Lucretia, who is closest. She automatically tucks his hand under her arm; touching Taako has become second nature to them all. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> finally, the end! will there be an epilogue??? who knows, not even me


End file.
